


Quench

by PeniG



Series: Akashic Records [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Because it's the flood, Child Death, Death, Hurt No Comfort, It Sucks, It's the Flood, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 18:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20179096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: Aziraphale has orders to observe the flood. And he's had a thousand years to learn how to interpret orders.





	Quench

The rain had fallen steadily for thirty-nine days and nights.

Aziraphale was miserable, but he was here to observe, and observe he would. He’d been a Guardian Angel for a thousand years now, and, initial distress once conquered, he knew how to interpret orders, even if he did feel squirmy about it. _Squirmy_ was unpleasant, but it was hardly _suffering_.

Unlike what was happening to the humans.

The last one on a roof was the easiest, always. He did his best with the earlier ones, brushing them with his hidden wings as they slid off, and would never know how effective the delivered blessing was, but the last one - in this case, two last ones, a mother with a baby swaddled against her, both too frightened and weary to weep - he could wrap his arms around as they went, breathing in the filthy water with them, pressing his lips to her forehead and kissing Eden into her while drawing her suffering into himself; pressing the baby against the heart he had conjured into his chest so that its last moments, like its first, were a heady mix of fear and love. It did not matter, in that moment, that the baby’s father was not the mother’s husband; that she was a gossip who reveled in scandal and spiced it with lies; that she looked down on her neighbors and pressed every advantage that she felt would elevate herself at their expense. What mattered was that her baby did not suffer. What mattered was that she did not die alone.

Aziraphale let his lungs fill up, with filthy water, with all the pain and helplessness she would have felt as she died, passed her some of the peace beyond understanding that he didn’t feel belonged to him. When she died he released her and the water, and bobbed to the surface like a cork, vertically, unlike the days-old dead bodies that emerged horizontal in the middle and drooping at the ends.

The surface was distinguishable from the depths by virtue of being more turbulent, water actively pouring down upon him rather than quietly closing in. He cleared the air immediately around his head and adjusted his eyesight in order to peer through the lashing whips of rain. All the roofs were gone, replaced by the bobbing bodies of goats, men, women, children, sheep, and a tree or two. He encouraged the current to bring him one of the trees, and held it steady with an effort of will as he climbed onto it, balancing more by miracle than anything else, to get a longer perspective.

Yes. That had been the last roof, on the highest building of the highest farm. The remaining survivors were black bits of flotsam crawling, painfully slowly, ahead of the flood up the ever-more-impossibly-steep mountains; apart, of course, from the ones in the gopherwood box tossing in the center of the storm. The Ark’s passengers would survive, but they weren’t enjoying the process.

Well, no one would enjoy anything for another day and night, at least. They’d all have to cope as best they could. Aziraphale rotated the dead tree under him until he located a suitable branch to hold onto, and snapped out his wings. For a few nasty seconds they fought the wind; and then the wind capitulated to the force of his need, pressed against the backs of the wings, and carried him toward the mountains. He had never missed flying so acutely before, but this - inspired by some clever humans he’d met while blessing a fishing village - would at least get him where he needed to be faster than swimming would. He was too buoyant to swim well in these conditions.

If he’d been able to fly, Gabriel would have expected him to report in by now, anyhow.

_“So I’m to observe the whole operation, all forty days and forty nights?”_

_“Yes, _if_ you can do it without discorporating. If you discorporate - no one will blame you.” Gabriel, robes pristine white on the seamless stone balcony overlooking the green fields of Heaven, smiled at him benignly._

_“It’s not as if I could drown. I expect I’ll manage.”_

_“More than one way to discorporate in a flood. You could undergo all kinds of injuries, smash yourself up.”_

_“Good thing I have so much experience in healing.”_

_“Yes, well, if you need to discorporate, don’t feel bad about doing it. We can’t be sending ladders down all the time, you know, and you _have_ been in that body for a thousand years or so.”_

_“It’s very serviceable, yes, sir.”_

_“And you’ve taken excellent care of it. It was never intended to last you so long. So don’t strain yourself. If you discorporate, your soul will return straight to Heaven and you can have a little break while we determine your next assignment.”_

_“Good to know, but I’ll endeavor not to make it necessary. What about the receding of the flood, sir? That much water won’t go away overnight.”_

_“There won’t be anything going on by then, except on the ark, and we’ve got flyers for that. If you’re still down there when the rain stops, we’ll find you and send a ladder.”_

_“Thank you, sir.”_

_“But really, there’s no shame in discorporating in a situation like this.”_

_“None at all, sir, I agree.”_

_“Good, good, so we’re all on the same page. Now, what’s the mission again?”_

_“Observe the flood. No saving the doomed.”_

_“Good. There’s a time and place for those Guardian instincts to kick in, you know.”_

_“Yes, sir. I’ll be off, then.”_

And down the ladder he’d gone, before Gabriel thought to tell him not to relieve suffering. Gabriel didn’t tend to think about suffering, unless Aziraphale brought it up, and he had been very, very careful not to bring it up. Just as he was very, very careful not to think, now, that knowing it would be unwise to bring it up was _almost_ the same as knowing Gabriel would have forbidden it if he’d thought of it, which meant he was only a short, technical, logic-chopping step away from disobeying. Instead he calculated statistics again, and again, the known population of the Mesopotamian Basin compared to the number of people he’d helped to die peacefully, coming up always with the same answer: out of all the people dead in the flood so far, he had relieved the passing of Too Few, and missed Too Many. That math would not change in the next twenty-four hours, and yet he made the wind sail him faster, and ran the numbers again, and if he cried in the rain, could even a Heavenly observer tell?

He had let random chance toss him around for days, but that wasn’t an option now. The wind and current would only sail him in circles among the already dead. At the next storm surge, the water would top the mountains, and everyone would be out of time and air. Steering in a storm was not a precise art even among the experienced, which Aziraphale was not; but the frantic distress of the soon-to-be drowned reached out to him and he homed, unthinking, on a signal that felt familiar, the tree ploughing through tossing corpses and debris and seething masses of fish feeding on unexpected bounty.

Too many exhausted humans had lost their footing on the slope and gone into the water before he reached the looming mountain, and there went another one, arms flailing. Aziraphale pulled his wings back into hiding, left the tree to smash itself to splinters on the rocks, and dived, reaching, brushing groping fingertips, pushing himself down and down and down. The bulging eyes were almost glazed over, the spirit on the verge of fleeing. He seized the hand and kissed the forehead and took the agony of the last moment, but that was all that he could take.

On the way up he met another, who seized him around the neck and would have strangled him; and another, and another. _Peace, children, peace, trade you all your suffering for this sweet still moment of peace._ A rock slammed into his side with bone-cracking force. He released the newest corpse and clawed his way up toward a beacon of distress, afraid he’d pushed too hard and would be on his way to Heaven in spite of himself; but someone seized him by the back of his robe and hauled him out enough to cough up several gallons of water, and a few small fish. The cracked ribs set themselves. The rain did not whip him; someone had spread a shelter over his head.

“Aziraphale?”

He blinked the water off his lashes, shook his head like a dog (his turban was long gone), and laughed weakly. “Hello, Crawly. Fancy meeting you here.”

_“What on earth are you playing at?_” Crawly had never looked more demonic, wings mantling them both, water streaming off his hair, eyes yellow rim to rim around dilated pupils; shouting into Aziraphale’s face, shaking him with hands worn hard and sharp with grasping, feet clinging impossibly to a rock rising out of the devouring flood.

“S’not playing, s’business. Got to go -“

“You can’t sssssave them, you idiot!”

“I know,” sobbed Aziraphale, tearing himself loose from the demon’s claws, leaving half his robe behind as he dove back into the water. They were children - why were they _all_ children? They slipped through his fingers as he reached for their fear, their pain, their - oh, _no_, guilt, not _guilt_, _none_ of the adults had felt any guilt, but _these_: _I shouldn’t have yelled at my sister, I shouldn’t have hated the baby, I shouldn’t have fallen asleep watching the goats, I’m bad my fault my fault_ \- He took it away from them, tore it out of them, filling the space left behind with love, and love, and _love_ -

Eventually there weren’t any more drowning children and he floated upward, slowly, one corpse among many, except he couldn’t be a corpse or he wouldn’t be here, he’d be in Heaven already. So he hadn’t discorporated, for all he held within him the pain of all those deaths, and the bonus pain of drifting among Too Many he hadn’t reached in time.

The body was heavy, tired, battered, broken in places he couldn’t quite track. It wanted to discorporate. But if he discorporated now he’d make a scene in Heaven, would have choice words for Gabriel, even for God, and that would never do. He wasn’t allowed to say the things he wanted to say. So he had better live. He rolled on his back, summoned up a small flicker of miracle to hold back the pounding rain from his face, and drifted under a sky of roiling squid-ink black.

He felt the wake wash over him from one side, then the other, several times, before he realized the big black snake was circling him. Bigger than he’d been in Eden; or maybe Aziraphale himself was smaller. Maybe he’d given too much away and was reduced to less than the size of the original body. Maybe he was collapsing in upon himself. “It’s almost over,” he told Crawly. “This is the fortieth night.”

“Now that they’re all dead, of coursssse it is.” The snake hissed in his face. “What’ssss the matter with you, angel? Not enough to kill them, you had to watch them all die?”

“Not all of them,” said Aziraphale, too tired to cry anymore. “I couldn’t reach all of them. They shouldn’t die alone, they shouldn’t die suffering, _someone_ should be there -“

“They shouldn’t have died in the firssst placccce!”

Aziraphale knew there was an answer to that, but it wasn’t a good answer and Crawly’d heard it before anyway. “Why are you still here? I gave you plenty of hints about safe places to go. You could have shortcut through Hell and been in the Western Hemisphere by now.”

“None of your businessss.”

“Demon business is too my business.”

“Maybe I wanted to watch the great harvest of sssoulsss for Hell!”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” said Aziraphale, resting his head on the nearest portion of Crawly’s back, cold and awash as it was. “They were all children, the last ones. All of them.”

“Becausse the children had the sssenssse to try to sssave themssselves! When the rain ssstarted they built raftss! Mini-arksss! Reed boatsss! Anything they could find that would float. But they foundered, and they wrecked on the mountaintop, and then there _wasn’t_ any mountaintop and the water sssswamped them!” Crawly was almost incoherent, but whether with rage or pain or frustration or some demonic combination, Aziraphale could not be sure.

Aziraphale wanted to tell someone that only the children had blamed themselves. All the adults and elders had died in the maturity of their sins and felt no guilt or regret for the evils they had committed. Only from the children had he taken that chorus of _my fault, my fault, my fault_. But he was afraid that if he told Crawly that, the poor old serpent would die of the knowledge. He’d figure it prominently in his report to Heaven. “I wonder if I’ll see this rainbow thing before the ladder comes for me,” he said.

“It can’t posssssibly be worth all thisss,” said Crawly.

They rode the waves awhile, and gradually another thought crept over the bodies piled in Aziraphale’s head. “You should go to Hell before dawn. The nearest land is straight down. I’m not the only one who could discorporate here. And if any other angel sees you, they’ll smite you.”

“I should drag you to Hell with me. You’re too weak to fight me.”

“I am. It wouldn’t matter if you did. I’d discorporate and get a new body when I rose back to Heaven.” He thought about that, blinking into the rain. “Unless they wouldn’t_ give_ me a new body. I don’t think Gabriel likes the way I do things. Or something. He almost seems to be encouraging me to discorporate, sometimes. But I don’t want to serve in Heaven. I want to serve on Earth.”

“What, sssssso you can watch them die?”

“So I can watch them live. They’re so fragile! And so brave!” Goodness, was he crying again, or was he losing the bubble of air shielding his face from the rain? “I’m glad you tempted the children to build boats.”

“They sssstilll died!”

“They died like humans, fighting all the way! And you can’t have kept track of _all_ of them, not in all this confusion. Maybe _some_ of them are still afloat. Maybe _some_ of them will wash up on a mountain that isn’t drowned. We can hope.”

“_I hate you, you sssssstupid usssssselessssssss angel._ You and everything you sssssssssstand for.”

“I know, my dear,” said Aziraphale, patting the smooth cold scales beside his ear. “I know. I don’t blame you.” He tried not to let his soul warm itself on the sensation of Crawly’s hot, frustrated, bitter, angry love, but he couldn’t help it.

The rain slackened. They drifted amid corpses and building debris as the wind stilled. Aziraphale became aware that they had somehow combined efforts to keep themselves afloat. Neither was really strong enough right now to do it alone, bodily or miraculously, but together they sufficed.

The rain stopped.

The sun rose, parting the clouds before it.

The rainbow was beautiful, and fragile, like a human soul. No one could see it, save themselves, and the miserable seasick passengers on the Ark, still tossing on the horizon.

“Not worth it,” said Crawly.

“It looks a bit like what your wings and scales do,” said Aziraphale. “When the sun hits them, just so.”

Heaven lowered a ladder made of sunbeams. Crawly hissed at it. Aziraphale roused himself to tread water. “Go back to Hell awhile, Crawly,” he said, pushing gently on the demon snake’s head. “It’s all over till the waters recede.”

_“Don’t tell me what to do!”_ Crawly sank beneath the turbid brown water, a vast black circular shadow.

Aziraphale swam to the ladder, hauled himself onto the lowest rung, and hung there for a long moment. One of his former students flew down to help him up, miracling him dry. “Thank you,” he said, hoisting himself another step.

“Was that the Serpent of Eden you pushed underwater?” She demanded.

“It was,” he admitted. “But let’s not make a fuss of it, please? I’m very tired.” Rung by rung, he struggled up to Heaven; while the Serpent settled through the water to the drowned land, and burrowed down.

-30-


End file.
